Sicily

Sicily:
large and rich island opposite the Italian mainland. In Antiquity, it was
settled by Phoenicians and Greeks, and contested by the Carthaginians,
Romans, Ostrogoths, and Byzantines. The first part of this article can
be found here.

Prehistory

According to legends recorded by Greek historians like Thucydides
(History of the Peloponnesian
war, §6.1)
Sicily
was first occupied by the tribe of the Sicanians, after whom the island
was called Sicania. The Elymians are said to be Trojans that settled in
Entella, Segesta, and Eryx
after the fall of Troy; a bit later or earlier, the Siculians crossed from
Italy to the island, defeated the Sicanians and pushed them to the west.

The words Sicanians and Siculians are almost identical and may be no
more than a western and an eastern pronunciation of the same name. Greeks
had some difficulty with the /n/ and /l/ in foreign tongues
(cf. the name of the Babylonian
king Nabonidus,
which they converted into "Labynetus"). Yet, there appears to be some historical
truth behind these legends.

Archaeologists have shown that in the 14th-13th century, the Mycenaean
Greeks had contact with a native bronze age culture in the east of the
island. Memories of this age live on in several stories about the Cretan
king Minos, who is said to have died on Sicily. Perhaps Homer's
Odyssey
contains other echoes from the bronze age, but we must not overstress this
point.

After some four or five centuries, the old native bronze age culture
still existed more to the west, and even later, the Greeks recognized that
the western native population differed from the eastern natives because
their culture had retained some archaic traits. What had happened is probably
this: during the Mycenaean age, the native culture in the east had started
to change, and groups of more conservative people moved to the west. Trade
with the Phoenicians during the Dark ages may have accelerated the development
of the eastern natives. When the Greeks arrived (and we have written sources
about Sicily), there was an archaic native community in the west, called
Sicanians, whereas the eastern natives, the Siculians, had a different,
more advanced culture.